Blog Blog Blog Blog

So things are going well. It's the end of the month, so things are finally slowing down work wise. Kinda nice! Four articles to go, and I'll be finished for the month. Then I get to work on shit for next month. And then rinse, repeat, etc etc. LETS BREAK IT DOWN, KIDS.

Houses

So, I totally have this weird obsession with living in a house. Or having my own house, I guess. Which is weird. As a child, I was never particularly amused by playing house. I always was some sort of zoo keeper, super hero, or butterfly (for reasons unknown to me then, and still unknown to me this very day.)

That being said, probably after I turned 18 or 19 or something, I started becoming obsessed with the concept of owning my own house. Also with housewifery, or at least working at home. I think a lot of it was I was missing stability in my life. High school ended, college began, college ended, etc etc.

Not to mention I'm very disenchanted with the renter lifestyle. It's hellish. We have a terrible landlord, and the fact that they expect $275 a month and we're not allowed to do very much without permission of our consistently absent landlord is absolutely retarded. Harrumph.

So the ultimate goal is to (hopefully) build our own house on a medium-sized plot of land. Somewhere rural-ish, but still close enough to a decent sized town to get good internet. And close enough to a decent-sized city so we can get out and do day of all that good crap. The goal is the Erie region.

The house goal? A small, sturdy wooden construct. We don't need a lot of space to be honest. I have a clear idea of what I want, and for the most part the boy is willing to go along with it. He's not thrilled with my choice, but he's begrudgingly going along with it. Most likely because we don't have the money for it, but when I win the lottery* and I move him into one of these suckers, he'll just have to get used to it:



He's not a fan of the wood look, but I find the outside incredibly charming. The inside, however, would probably be surprisingly sleek, modern, and somewhat minimalistic. I'm not one for clutter or tchotchkes - thanks mom! They're not what you'd call "big" houses - but they're big enough. Also they don't need heaters or air conditioners!

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. You're probably making this face in fact:

But the houses are geo-thermal. This particular brand is called Enertia, and I highly recommend you check out their website if you're into green living and general architecture.

With the bottom level placed below the frost layer, the basement never gets colder than 55 degrees - and in the summer, the lack of sunlight penetrating it, it doesn't get much over 65-70. The houses are built in a peculiar way as well. They're kinda like a house inside of a house. Which is just badass as hell when you think about it.

Basically in the winter, the windows suck up all the heat (which can be increased by laying big ol black granite slabs down or any other sort of dark flooring) and circulate it around your house and heat up the walls and floors and then through the night, your house releases its heat into itself and keeps it anywhere from 62-74. In the summer, you open the windows on the roof, and the windows on the floor level, and it creates a sort of crazy-ass draft that sucks in air on the cooler side of the house, drags it through your in-ground level, and it then yanks it up the hot side of your house, pulling the hot air with it, and then out the roof. Apparently it's capable of keeping it between 65-80 in some of the hottest regions in the US, such as the Californian desert.

UHM AWESOME?

Part of me wants it because it's a relatively green way to live. Part of me wants it because on average, it reduces your home energy bill by 2/3rds and I'm hella cheap. The other part of me just wants to look up to the south side of my house at night and see this:



Ah, living the dream.

So you probably thought I was never coming back here. That I was never going to update ever again. Well, you're right. aFitS is closed. Forever. See you later bye.

Okay, no. It isn't. As per the norm I've been up to my ass in work and between the insomnia and the WoW raiding and the big gay everything else I've been doing, it's pretty much been backburnered, but not for forever. I've been meaning to come back here and at least try to update once or twice a week, and I think I'll be able to get that - not this month though. We're finishing up our work (both Sanct and I work for Bright Hub after all) and we're just keepin' on with it for now. September is proving to be slightly less hectic, with only labor day on the plate as far as big social times go. My parents are going to be taking a trip to the OBX with the rest of the family, so I plan to spend a large chunk of my required house-sitting gig writing blogs and articles and maybe taking a little bit of a WoWbreak in order to catch up on making this place not seem so neglected.

Who knows, maybe I'll find a new feature to shove in here (so I can forget about it like all my NSFWs and Frontpage Fridays.)

Lets move onto a topic for the day:

Overexposure.

No, not the weird camera effects. I'm talking like... Being over exposed to something. Do you guys ever do that to yourselves? I do it with fair frequency. For example: When I first heard Lady GaGa, I was absolutely obsessed. Something about her voice and the Euroglam techno-rock sound was extremely catchy and I was hooked from then on out. I was hooked through Fame and Fame Monster. Finally, however, I got sick of her. Now, when the CD in the car comes around to the two or three Lady GaGa tracks that I put on it, I change them with fair quickness.

I've done that with video games too. A good example was when I was really into Final Fantasy (mainly because I was really into turn-based fighting games, I have always found jRPGs a little hokey, though.) - I played 8 first, then followed it almost immediately with 7. I played Tactics. And then almost immediately with 10 (yes, I started that late into the franchise), and by the time I got to 9 I couldn't go on. Actually, that might have just been because 9 was terrible. Though to be perfectly honest, none of the game are really all that good. So this isn't a flawless example. I did, however, enjoy Dirge of Cerberus somewhat.

But I do it with TV shows and comedians and other things. I think the best example though, was Family Guy.